Yet another extended drabble. This is a mutli-chaptered thingy that's been festering on my HD. I've been sick with a cold lately and the only thing keeping me sane is my fanfiction. Updating old stories and posting new ones, here's the latest addition to my repertoire of fanfic. The Starfleet Misadventures of Esmeralda Shirin here for your viewing pleasure. Please don't hate me, I know it's not a masterpiece.

Still nothing belongs to me, I'm still broke, don't sue. I sure wish the boys were mine, though. :D

Chapter One

Esmeralda Shirin looked out the windshield of her dad's old '97 Mustang and wondered if she was actually lost. The car had been a graduation gift when she graduated out of Starfleet Medical Academy at the top of her class. She'd worked one two-year tour of duty with the USS Yorktown under Christopher Pike, two years at the Embassy, one year on Alpha Centauri, and one in Chicago when she decided to try out civilian life. She'd been transferred to Savannah Central Hospital from Chicago Unitarian, and while finding Savannah was easy, finding her new residence was not. Considering the hospital she'd be working at was no more than seven minutes away, it shouldn't have been this hard to find the damn house. She'd bought the place sight-unseen and for whatever reason, she couldn't find it. Frustrated, she pulled over on a quiet residential street and folded her arms over the steering-wheel, wishing she could find this place. The house was on Rio Road, she had to be getting close. Esmeralda looked at the directions again and sighed.

"79 Rio Road, Savannah, Georgia. How hard can it be on a street that's not even a mile long?" She huffed and saw the house two down from where she was parked. She squinted, "7…5. 77…79." She looked over, "I'll be damned, that was lucky." She put the car in park and took the key out of the ignition, getting out to look at the house. It looked just like the pictures the realtor had sent her, and she went up to the front door. Under the welcome mat, she found the house-key and let herself inside.

"Wow." She liked the house, having never seen it before, "This…I could get used to this." She moved in the boxes she had in her car and called the moving company that was holding the rest of her stuff. They promised to send out the truck that day and Esmeralda called Savannah Central Hospital to let them know she'd made it to town and would be moving into her house over the weekend. The Chief of Staff, who sounded like the kind of man Esmeralda would like working for, told her not to worry about it, they'd take her when they got her. So, she started moving in, putting things where she wanted them to go. The movers showed up and she told them where to put everything. After all of her furniture was in place, she paid the movers and finished the boxes she'd brought with her. At sunset, she went down to the deep-water dock and watched the sky change colors. The fireflies came out en masse and the crickets and cicadas struck up their evening chorus as it grew dark, and Esmeralda had to smile. For some reason, this was just perfect. When the moon came up, she went back to the house and got ready for bed.

She spent the weekend moving into her new house, wondering where her neighbors were. She met her neighbors on her right and across the street, but her left-hand neighbor seemed to be out of town. Her other neighbors assured her that he was just out of town at a conference. What kind of conference? A psychology conference was taking place in Chicago. So her neighbor was a doctor? Interesting, but not too surprising. Esmeralda thought she might have run into him if she'd stuck around back in Chicago.

On Monday, she showed up early at the hospital and met David McCoy, the Chief of Staff of SCH. He was just the kind of man she'd imagined him to be, and they got along right away. He didn't seem to mind at all that she was, technically by default of her education and previous positions, a city girl. Savannah was smaller than a lot of places she'd been before, but she kind of liked the small-town feel.

The house to her left remained empty for a week, and Esmeralda had no idea what kind of person her neighbor was and just hoped he wasn't a jerk. She had the bad luck of attracting the bastards when it came to guys, especially guys in the medical profession. Although she had to admit, she had met her share of officers who were just as bad. She wasn't a swooning nurse, she didn't worship the ground they walked on, she wasn't going to kiss their ass, and no, she didn't think they were God's gift to women. Excuse me, I have a job to do.

One thing she did was buy a dog. One of her neighbors had a cousin who bred Irishh Red and White Setters, and one day after her shift, she drove out to a small farm a few miles outside of town to see the dogs. She settled on a spunky year-old female the breeder had creatively named Iraws, a play on the breed-name pronounced like the flower Irish. For her sake and the dog's, Esmeralda changed the dog's name to Irish. Irish had a fondness for water and if she wasn't launching off the end of the floating dock, she was paddling around in the pool in the backyard. Esmeralda vigilantly took Irish for runs in the morning before work and played with her in the backyard when she got home while dinner was cooking, and she usually fixed dinner in the outdoor kitchen for ease. This drew her neighbors over and she always had company for dinner. The kids played around in the pool while the adults sat around and chatted over drinks. She told her neighbors that the kids were welcome to the dock and the pool any time, that made her a lot of friends, and it made her feel part of the neighborhood dynamic.